Bucket List: Travels, Eats, and Experiences

The other day, I was cleaning out my two boxes full of black-and-white composition notebooks and came across a list that I'd penned during my freshman year of high school. It was a Bucket List - or a list of things to do, places to see, experiences to partake, or foods to eat during ones' lifetime.
While I graduated from high school almost ten years ago, the items on this particular list still has significance today. Further searches among my notebooks found subsequent "versions" of the list done in later years.

Taking these lists I updated it with new items and crossed off items that I accomplished since drafting the bucket list. There are two approaches in viewing some items on this list - some are to be done during my life, and others are to be done before I lose my sight due to retinis pigmentosa (Usher Syndrome - read my blog post on the diagnosis here).

BUCKET LIST

THINGS TO DO

• Perform in a musical (Fame, 2005)
• Be on the Oprah Winfrey Show (September 2010)
• See a captioned film at the movie theaters (Summer 2005: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory")
• Hear and understand at least 100 songs without visual aid (Check!)
• Be on national TV (Oprah, 2010)
• Publish a book
• Publish an article (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf VIEWS)
• Navigate a Rope Course
• Graduate from college (Check - twice!)
• Get a job that I love doing
• Get a Library of Congress card (Check!)
• Learn Latin and other foreign languages (Latin in High School; Duolingo - Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Handful of British Sign Language)
• Close Walt Disney World by being the last guest to leave  (2006)

THINGS TO EAT

• Cronut
• Hot Chocolate at Max Brenner's (Check!)
• Beignets at Cafe du Monde
• Georgetown Cupcakes (Check!)
• Fried Green Tomatoes (Check! At Hyman's Seafood restaurant in Charleston, SC)
• Key Lime Pie on a Stick (2005 Key West)
• Eat at a sidewalk cafe in Paris
• A proper Welsh Cheese Rarebit
• Drink an Egg Cream (Check!)
• Scotch Eggs
• Pasta in Italy
• Crepes on the street in Paris
• Garrett's popcorn while leaving the shop in Chicago (Check! Multiple times - still the best way!)
• Boston Cream Pie (Check!)
• New York style pizza in NYC (And I will NOT compare it to Chicago style : )

PLACES TO VISIT

• Boston, Massachusetts (LEAD conference 2012)
• Visit the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA (2009; played tour guide to poor victim friend)
• London, England
• Big Ben
• London Eye
• St. Paul Cathedral
• 22B Baker Street
• Peter Pan statue
• Harrods
• Harry Potter Studio Tour
• Photo at Platform 9 3/4 
• Blenheim Park, England
• Paris, France 
• Louvre
• Eiffel Tower
• Notre Dame
• Rome, Italy 
• Coliseum
• Trevi Fountain
• Roman Forum
• Salzburg, Austria 
• Sound of Music Tour
• Neuschwanstein Castle
• Germany
• Switzerland
• Stay at the Hotel Rotterdam (Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
• Amsterdam, the Netherlands 
• Anne Frank House
• Rijksmuseum
• Boat ride on the canal
• FAO Schwarz and The Strand in New York City. 
• Visit the Playmobil factory in Zirndorf, Germany
• Climb the steps inside Statue of Liberty
• See the Northern Lights
• Highclerc Castle (Where "Downton Abbey" was filmed)
• Titanic Museum in Belfast, Ireland
• Smithsonian Museums (2014)
• Reading Room at Library of Congress (2014)

TRANSPORTATION MUSTS

• Go on a cruise (Carnival Inspiration, Cozumel, 2011)
• Sail on the QE2
• Sail on the Queen Mary 2
• Sail on a Holland America Line ship
• Sail on a Disney Cruise Line ship
• Take a journey on an Amtrak train (2014 Silver Star, Columbia, SC - Washington DC)
• Ride the train to the Grand Canyon (2009)
• Ride the London Eye
• Fly solo on a trip (Boise, ID - Salt Lake City, UT 2004)
• Learn to drive a car
• Ride the Funicular in Switzerland and/or a cable car
• Take a around-the-world cruise
• Ride on the upper deck of a double-decker bus
• Ride in the front car on the Monorail and obtain a Co Pilot License (2006)

LITERATURE TO READ

• All seven Harry Potter books (2007)
• Lord of the Rings trilogy (2004)
• Chronicles of Narnia (2002)
• Jane Austen's works (Still in progress)
• Read as many Classics as possible
• See the Gutenberg Bible up close (2014 at Library of Congress)
• Read "Murder on the Orient Express" while traveling on a train (2014)

SHOWS TO SEE

• Rent (2008, 2009)
• The Lion King (2007; first ASL interpreted Broadway tour)
• Wicked (2007, 2008, 2014)
• Les Miserables
• The Phantom of the Opera (2009)
• Sweeney Todd
• Into the Woods
• Mary Poppins (2009)
• A Broadway show in NYC

PEOPLE TO MEET

• Julie Andrews (September 2010, November 2010)
• Linda Bove (2006)
• Idina Menzel (2008)
• Johnny Depp
• Marlee Matlin (1988, 2006)
• Kristin Chenoweth (2012)
• Robin Williams
• The cast of Harry Potter (basically the Who's Who of the British Film Industry)
• J.K. Rowling
• Walt Disney

It's interesting to compare the several versions of the bucket lists I complied over the years. Some things remained the same (traveling, publishing, foodstuff, people to meet) while others were added on later (the debut of The Queen Mary 2 and the London Eye as well as the Harry Potter Studio tour). There were several instances where a few items were crossed off at the same time (being on TV as well as be on the Oprah Winfrey Show) or as a result chance encounter that warranted a last-minute add (trying the Key Lime Pie on a Stick while on vacation in Key West, Florida).

The fact that the main list remained unchanged (I still wanted to do the same things five, ten, or fifteen years later) shows that the more I want something, the longer it stays on the list. There are a few items that I know I won't be able to achieve in my lifetime - including meeting Mr. Williams and Mr. Disney - but there'll be a chance in the afterlife.

I wisely put items of varying level of success - from the small items easily crossed off (foodstuffs and books to read) to balance out the higher-reach items (traveling, meeting famous people, etc) with some mid-size items (publishing, seeing Broadway shows, etc). Doing this makes the list more likely to succeed, and the small items crossed off do add up quickly, thus making the list look a bit more completed.

In later years, some items became no longer possible  (learn to drive a car, for instance) due to be diagnosed with Usher Syndrome. Nevertheless, I found alternative ways - drive a go-kart? Sure! Man the tiller of a sailboat? Yep. Excel at MarioKart Wii? Done! Drive the cars on the Autopia at Disneyland and the Tomorrowland Speedway at Disney World? You bet! As long as we choose to look at it from a different angle, those items are very much doable.

With that, it became more important in later years (especially after the diagnosis) to mark off the bigger items that require travel. While I have View-Master reels of locations across Europe, they are no match for the real things, and I would very much like to see and I experience those sights before I lose my sight. Of course, there is money involved : ) If nothing else, there's always the World Showcase at Epcot at Disney World to contend oneself with.

Hopefully I will be able to check off most of those in my lifetime - and life of sight.

What's on YOUR Bucket List?